


Matte

by saltpehg (milkthepig)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, adult convos like.. drugs!, adults!, and other crap, and sex, limited research on French culture, motorcycle-Marinette, so apologies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-08-13 10:46:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7973986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkthepig/pseuds/saltpehg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(This has been done twenty-billion times before) Marinette and co. have moved on from their collège days and are now blossoming into independent little adults with post-secondary education, career goals, and relationship issues.  Marinette has a continuing streak for bad-assery and daredevilish tendencies; she's not entirely the stuttering little sweet girl she was before.  Ladybug and Chat Noir parted their messy ways without finding out who the other person was, but now that she's back home from school for Spring Break, can they pick up where they left off?<br/>Angst, dorkiness, and comedy that hopefully passes as such.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Surprise

"Sweet little Marinette rides a motorcycle now?" Juleka's mother says with her nose scrunched just a bit as she stops Sabine mid-sentence at the marketplace. The fromager folds a paper bag into Sabine's small hands and she can’t help it: crinkling the ends of the bag open, she lets the tang of Roquefort cheese spring into her nostrils. It’s her daughter’s favorite cheese, and will pair nicely with the Cabernet, year 2011, Ms. Dupain-Cheng picked up earlier on her excursion. 

“She always did have a little bit of a daredevil her mother had in her at her age,” Ms. Dupain-Cheng supposes, and her eyes crinkle at the sides as she smiles warmly at the other woman’s screeching. “I at least prefer motorcycles over experimenting recreationally alongside a potential future baby daddy.” She sniffs to give off a pretend air of derision for Ms. Couffaine’s benefit.

“Although I must say I am a little worried; this is her first trip without her riding group from La Cambre, and I always wondered how unforgiving that seat was when you have no one else to complain to about it,” she says while bending over and examining the spread of cold cuts beyond the glass. 

“From Brussels?” Her companion shrieks louder. “And you and Tom let her??” Ms. Couffaine stands there, face blanching and mouth agape like a carp mouthing the surface of water for pellets.

Ms. Dupain-Cheng sighs, and although she is an extremely patient woman, what little she has left is wearing thin. She has a lot to prepare for before the whirlwind that is her daughter arrives home from school for Spring Break. But still, she smiles, tucking a packet of crisps into her wooden basket and weaves around Ms. Couffaine.

“Marinette is a capable young grown lady, Marjolaine. If she wants to spend her hard-earned Euros on a bike as a present for _finally_ settling on her Spécialité, I won’t be the one standing in her way. Not that anyone actually could,” Sabine says. Sabine may be cordial and kind even on her worst days, but no one could say she wasn’t a proud mother, and took every chance to gush politely about her daughter. 

At least Sabine didn’t mention that this was Marinette’s second bike, with far more horses wrangled into the engine than the first. She didn’t want the other woman to shit her pants because Marinette chose to walk perpendicularly to the status quo, after all. 

Ms. Couffaine visibly gulps and clutches at the collar of her blouse as images of the tiny, sweet, stuttering dark-haired blue-eyed girl from collège speeds through her mind in leather chaps atop an angry machine of matte and chrome before crashing into a brick wall with a mushroom cloud explosion.

“Are you envisioning the cartoon demise of my daughter, Ms. Couffaine?” Sabine teases and points to the air above the other woman’s head. “Are those… chaps?”

“Oh, u-uh, no, absolutely not! I’m sure she’s--ah-- a very capable young woman as you said.”

Sabine nods once. “Well, I must be off to the bakery, Tom’s cooking a welcome-home dinner without me and you know how stressed men get in the kitchen without a woman’s steadying touch.”

It isn't long before Ms. Dupain-Cheng scurries out into the already-crowded streets of Paris with large paper bags swinging from her arms full of richly-scented decadence in the form of her daughter’s favorite foods. She sends a quick text to Marinette as a bit of the other woman’s anxiety seeps underneath her skin.

It is a Thursday, the last day of classes at La Cambre before a week-and-a-half’s worth of glorious Spring Break. Marinette’s heart thrums against the tight leather of her calf-brown cafe jacket, and with the flick of a gloved hand and the toe of her boot, the ‘angry black beast’ beneath her leaps into a higher gear and devours the straight away. With an expert lean and a smooth twist of the throttle, she rips through a bend in the road, carefully ignoring the target fixation that accompanies the twisties, her knee hovering above the fine line of dangerous and daring as the asphalt trails behind her. 

Every single time she sits on her bike she wonders if this is the time her excitement will finally wane and riding will simply fade away into the monotony of transportation. But as the wind reels through her hair, now a respectably-wild and free-flowing length that kisses the top of her ass in dead air, and that notion is flung as far away from her as soon as she’s out on the road. Underneath the smoked visor of her helmet, she smiles, always. 

Even with the thrill of riding prickling the skin on her arms and sending a trail of sweat down the middle of her breasts, she misses the steadying presence of her riding crew. The miles get longer as time goes on, and the stiffness in her legs after riding for two hours starts to get to her. Racing bikes are damn fun and worth ten times their weight in gold with how responsive they are, but they are never particularly comfortable to ride on longer trips with no breaks. If she was riding with her group, they would have made a pitstop at Scarpe-Escaut to stretch their legs and steel their nerves from the traffic in Belgium, but she was eager to get home and see her family and Alya, so she pressed on ahead.

It’s a three hour trip that Marinette can make in a little over two as long as she doesn’t gulp down coffee beforehand. She hits the familiar outskirts of Paris and rolls to a modest speed on E15 as the traffic picks up. It takes her a while to weave through to get downtown, but by the time the Eiffel Tower crests into view, it’s a little after 3PM. 

A new excitement takes hold of her, the kind that blossoms into grandiose plans about how she will spend her time buried to the hilt in fun, distracting, mind-numbing things with her child-pre-adulthood friends. So enthralled in her thoughts is she that as she pulls her sleek beast into a moto-parking spot and slides off the seat and out of her jacket to make a quick dash into the market to pick up a bottle of wine--did her mother remember to get some or not? She didn’t think to check her texts--she bumps right into the warm chest of a young man clad in the finest of slim-fitted blouses, who stands well over two heads taller than she. Her helmet overcompensates for the collision--of course she forgot to take it off in her haste and the dread trickles to her stomach as she realizes how much of a dork that makes her look--and she teeters backwards, the ground threatening to leap up to meet the cushion of her ass.

But his hands reach out, lightning quick, like a cat pawing a tendril of light on the water’s surface, and grab her bare shoulders. He had been watching her as she pulled up, all smoked up in leather and chrome and deliciously out-of-season boot, her speed and wild carelessness pulsating from her and intoxicating him as he moved with the flow of human traffic along the sidewalk. He knew that body anywhere as he always subconsciously looked for it wherever he went, its lithe modesty fully-decked from neck to toe in red and spots, sprinting across the rooftops of Paris alongside him, years ago. But that had been a messy tornado of misunderstood feelings, teenage angst, and a door that had never been properly shut, so he never did find out who his lady was underneath the mask. 

A lady whom he is so sure just crashed into him after getting off her motorcycle. If that’s not the hottest thing, Ladybug on a damn naked streetfighter, he’ll drop dead right now, and still be happy about it. Time has only treated her far better as a princess than his memory: she stands taller and more sure of herself (if that’s even possible, to be more confident than Ladybug), sleek muscle contouring the smooth freckled skin of her arms, and dark wash jeans hugging hips he could...would gladly die for. Long black hair, tickling the bare skin of her lower back, and he only notices because her jacket and shirt ride up, don't you see-- If he thought about anything further, things would go way South way too quickly.

It seems like an eternity passes as he stands there, clasping this woman’s shoulders, eyes trailing along the curling vines and subtle geometry of an intricate tattoo that peeks from underneath her armpit and trails lazily along her bicep. She moves her head, shaking it, and the sunlight winks off the smoked filter of her helmet, and rips him out of his reverie. He can’t believe it, but he almost gets caught staring too long.

One of his cardinal rules: never let the fairer sex know you’ve been staring at them for any length of time. Anything other than subtlety is not an option.

He clears his throat. Words he hasn't spoken in years resurface in his brain and tumble out of his mouth before he can actually start thinking with the head on his shoulders again. “My la--”

“I AM SO SORRY,” Marinette squeaks, not even paying the least bit of attention to what he thinks was a long and healthy bout of examining her physique, and takes only a parting glance at the man who saved her from further embarrassment. How in all the hells does Paris still bring out her childish mousiness, after all these years?

Her voice muffles inside her helmet, which she refuses to take off in solidarity of her forgetfulness, and scoots inside. But not before the flash of creamy blonde and a sprig of emerald enter into her delayed perception, and in the crowd of the marketplace, now bustling with the good folk of Paris rummaging about for the ingredients for dinner, she rips off her helmet to search for him in the crowd outside.

Pupils blown wide, her eyes dance only for a second along the nameless faces that surge around her in such a cinematic fashion. She clutches onto her helmet as if it’s the only buoy left keeping her afloat. 

But of course, the man’s gone.

“Was that…”

“Adrien Agreste?” A little voice pipes up from underneath her jacket collar, and a soft red fuzz nuzzles her jawline. 

Marinette blinks for a second until a passerby jars her into motion with an unceremonious nudge and a hasty apology without even stopping. Her face darkens. His name brings on the swirling memory of growing pains and the cauterized ends of a crush-friendship combo.

“No Tikki,” she scoffs, and whirls around to make a beeline to the wine section. “He left Paris, remember? But not before he dumped me on my ass after I served a heaping portion of my bleeding heart that only beat for him.”

Tikki fluffs up a bit at this, making an unintelligible kwami noise and scoots further into the recesses of Marinette’s jacket. “Marinette…” she chids in her best mother voice. “Perhaps he came back to Paris.” 

Tikki chose her words very carefully, but Marinette knows what she is implying. Yes, she wasn’t clearly articulate about her feelings--her platter of undying love she presented him with was a disastrous mix of stuttering, swinging-door buzz words and sentiments that could easily be misconstrued as platonic sentiments. Yes, he was in love with someone else, no doubt someone in the States where he had traipsed off to. No, she didn’t know what he went through living with his father, and yes, she knew he had to get out of Paris as soon as possible if he was to ever enjoy anything in his life. And so, he did, simple as that.

But did it have to end like that?

And she still blames him for Chat Noir’s disappearance, even though the two have nothing to do with each other. Paris was never the same without her partner, or the recipient of her unrequited love, and that’s why she went to Brussels to be a fashionista and a bad-ass.

Tikki sighs and shakes her head at this, although Marinette doesn’t know why.

Deep-seated alumni anger roils within her, and reminds her why she is the way she is. She steels herself.

“Even if he was back, after all this time…” Marinette says, although perhaps to herself more than Tikki, and jerks a bottle from one of the baskets without looking at the label. 

“Fuck him.”


	2. Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate, but the enemies-to-lovers things gets my noodle goin'. So does slow burn. Here, have both!  
> Yes, they're idiots.  
> Adrien especially.  
> Yes, things will be explained a little later.
> 
> Hooray for double-updates.

“Our sweet little Marinette has gone to Brussels and ah,...” Tom Dupain’s deep booming voice echoes down the stairs of the bakery, and there’s no way through the bustling sounds of the apartment kitchen and music petering over the surround sound can anyone hear the ding! of the shop’s bell as she opens the door. Plus, she’s had years of treading softly on her feet, dashing across rooftop shingles and vaulting herself over balconies to perfect her stealth. But the excitement that accompanies startling her parents by actually showing up _early_ ebbs a bit when she catches the tail end of her parents talking about her to God-knows-who.

It is an hour or two later since she arrived in Paris. She blames the Spring crisp on the air and the delicious smells of the marketplace--such things make her meander. But in Marinette time, she's still way early.

“...And is all grown-up, _bro_ ,” Nino finishes. Marinette can perfectly imagine the sly look in her best friend’s boyfriend’s eye as he nudges the ribs of his " _bro._ " It’s only Nino, she sighs and toes off her boots in the mudroom beyond the kitchen next to several pairs of other shoes, then trots up the stairs on silent feet. Her leather jacket creaks as she reaches for the door, dampening her stealth M.O.

“I mean, damn, no offense babe--and Mr. Dupain, Ms. Cheng--but girl’s got it goin’ on. Dark vibes, seedy bars and fast cars, that one.”

Alya chuckles. “Yeah, you should see her now. She’s a sassy little thing, especially on that--”

Marinette bursts in, a blush dusting her cheeks as she puts an end to all of whatever the hell is going on in her home right now.

“Mom! Dad! Alya and Nin--”

“O-Oh!” Sabine twitters, and a spoon clatters against the counter. The apartment is silent, save for the bubbling of sauce on the stove and the wind dancing in and out of her friends’ open mouths. 

“Mari! Honey!” Sabine peels off her apron and saves the day, swooping into Marinette’s wide arms, which currently hung in the air awkwardly as she stared at the blonde-haired beauty sitting relaxed and easy as you please at her dining room table. “You really should be better about checking your phone, dear,” she says, smiling. Marinette towers over her mother, having grown into a bit of her father’s height, but she’s still no match for the long legs that sprawl out underneath the table from the stranger in her house. 

Blue meets green in a split, wide-eyed second of innocent, unassuming surprise before their faces fall in the avalanche of the distant angry years that transpired between them.

“--Adrien?,” she half-snarls, half-shrieks, forgetting everything else in the room save for him. No hint of shame or humility to be seen on the smug--smug?! look on his face as he sits, uninvited to her homecoming party, arms flung back over Alya and Nino’s chair like he possesses no modicum of civility. The clean press of his blouse and tight pull of his several-hundred-dollar silken-wool trousers belies the muscled flesh underneath as if he’s sitting there for the explicit purpose of everyone else’s admiration.

“Speaking, Princess.” He flicks two fingers at her in a piss-poor attempt of a greeting. The very nerve.

“Who the hell invited y--”

Nino dips his head, pointy finger raised, at least with the decency to be somewhat embarrassed. “I, uh, hello! Marinette, dude. I, erm, he’s with me, we’re just stopping over for a bit and then we’ll be out of your family’s hair--”

She arches an eyebrow at him and flicks her gaze over to Alya, who shrugs and munches happily on a bowlful of homemade croutons with a questionable expression on her face. Much interrogation will be had, and violently, to the traitorous girl that sits on Adrien’s right like nothing is wrong.

Marinette sighs, and whips a hand through her hair to fling a few stray wisps of long hair behind her before slamming down her helmet onto the coffee table in the living room. Not at all intentional, but the Vault-Boy-giving-the-middle-finger sticker on her helmet faces Adrien in all of its rude cartoonish glory. She ignores the narrow scope of his gaze as he follows her every move. “Well? Hugs?”

Nino rockets off of his chair and sweeps Alya into a bone-crushing hug and the three of them are united once more in solidarity. The familiar smell of Nino’s ever-present stale mint chewing gum and spritz of bergamot and lemon cologne mingle with the strong citrusy notes of Alya’s shampoo. Both of these are familiar childhood scents that seek to ground her tempestuous emotions. 

“Such vibrant energy, girl! You get hotter every time you come back,” Alya purrs into the curl of Marinette’s ear. Alya loves it, this strange and unexplained animosity that crackles between her best friend and the svelte young man that lounges like a cat in her most personal of spaces. 

Nino’s whisper fills her other ear. “Yeah, babe. Why, erm... Are you so angry?”

“Do tell,” Alya presses, although she’s keen to most of it. Marinette cuts her eyes over to the journalist. _I’m going to kill you_ , says a look that most indeed will make good on such a promise. 

“Not now, Alya, darling,” she quips, patting her bestie on the cheek with resounding smacks, and breaks away from the hug. “We have a guest, unaccounted for.” She walks over, or stomps, rather, and thrusts out a hand as the Americans do.

“It’s been a while, Adrien,” she says haughtily.

Adrien breaks his languid posture and stands up without any hurry to clasp his hand around hers. His warmth seeps into her palm, and she wants to pull away, but his grip won’t let her. A Cheshire grin spreads across his lips, and perfectly white teeth gleam from underneath them. “A pleasure, Marinette, as always. And it’s been, what? Five years and three months since I went to the States? Who's counting! But Mr. Agreste will do.” He reaches down to kiss the outside of her forehand. “Trying to be more of an adult these days.”

She wrenches her hand back and sees the inquiring look of her father as he peeks over a cookbook at the two of them. She inwardly sighs--her parents are so damn curious, but to their credit, they at least put up a believable front that they’re still cooking. Lots of pot smacking and spoon scraping going on in the background. She sucks in air for a retort, but Alya swings in and pulls her away.

“My, my, everyone is just so different from collège, eh, Nino?” He looks just as perplexed as Marinette’s parents do, clearly having not been included as intimately into the loop of his two best girls’ lives as previously thought. “You boys probably should go get ready for the show tonight,” she says to her boyfriend under waggling eyebrows. Nino at least takes that much of a hint and swings an arm into the loop of Adrien’s elbow. 

“You’re right, boo. Just wanted to see ya when you got here, Marinette. Glad you’re back in town for a while,” he says. Marinette’s anger tones down a bit, and she grunts at him in what he understands as appreciative affirmation.

Adrien turns to her parents and dips down low for a bow. “Mr. Dupain, Ms. Cheng, thank you for the hospitality, and again--my apologies for showing up on the fly.” His voice is marred by the quick sultry tang of an American-French hybrid accent, but the Chinese flows off his tongue like liquid butter and honey drizzled on a crisp of toast.

Sabine comes over to give him the customary goodbye kisses on the cheek, and Marinette watches, so incredibly confused as his cheeks visibly warm from the motherly contact. Damnit, that’s her mother, take your charm and affectations elsewhere. Her staring morphs into a glare.

He catches her watching him, and gives her a lazy wink before standing to full-stature. He towers over everyone in the room, save for Tom. 

“Don’t be a stranger, Adrien-Honey,” Sabine says, her crow’s feet wrinkling with a warm smile. 

“Alya,” he says with a dip of his head before his voice drops silkily. “Marinette.” He follows Nino out. Marinette finally finds her voice and calls down the stairs.

“But be a stranger for the next week and a half, _Monsieur_ Agreste,” she snarls.

“Marinette!” Tom exclaims. “Manners!” 

But his daughter flings herself into a chair like a five-year old, scowling. Alya slides into the seat next to her, a very expectant expression on her face.

“He doesn’t deserve any,” Marinette mumbles, taking a crouton from the bowl and smashing it on the table with her fist. 

" _MARINETTE,_ " Tom wails. "Those are homemade with tender loving care!!"

“I knew you guys had a thing, girl, but I didn’t know it was that kinda thing,” Alya gushes. “What was that all about?” Marinette expects her to whip out a pad and pen, or at least the notes app on her phone and start transcribing the scene. 

“There’s nothing to tell.” Right on cue, Tikki nips the soft fold of skin between her breast and arm, and Marinette can hear the kwami’s voice in her mind, as she’s said it hundreds of times: “You need to talk about this, Marinette. Bottled-up emotions manifest themselves in unhealthy ways the longer you let it stew.”

“Does he make you call him Mr. Agreste?” Marinette turns to Alya, who is typing out a text message to Nino, no doubt.

“No,” she responds, and the two look questioningly at each other. “Did you ‘piss in his Wheaties,’ as the Americans say?”

Marinette flicks her gaze at her parents, who have returned back to actually cooking. “We’ll be upstairs, Mom!” she says and runs over to the cabinets to grab two wine glasses. Alya takes the bottle of wine in tow, and the two storm up to Marinette’s room in the attic.

\------------------------------------  
“Dude, what the FUCK was that?” Nino repeats after they’ve walked a few blocks from the Dupain-Cheng bakery, and brings Adrien back into the present. His mind still swirls with the fog of Marinette’s body in her tight little pants on the back of that motorcycle posted up outside their shop. The same motorcycle, and the same curves from before, at the market. 

“When did she get a tattoo?” He accidentally wonders out loud, picturing his fingers tracing the vines back up and into her shirt, and Nino smacks his shoulder. That wins a snooty little glare from Adrien, who grips his friend’s fingers and peers at them for signs of dirt or grease.

Nino yanks his hand out of Adrien’s grasp and shoots him a look of disgust. “When did you get like that?” He fires back. 

Adrien’s shoulders droop a bit, and he backs off. His hand snakes up to the back of his head and he worries at his blonde curls with embarrassed fingers. “Sorry man, it’s the shit I’ve been into recently. I… this is expensive,” he concedes. Like Nino knows, or cares.

“Well, while you’ve been dealing in the superficial shit-world of your late father,” Nino says with both hands stirring a cauldron of crap in front of Adrien and throwing him a disapproving eye, “we’ve been keepin’ it real. Marinette got that tattoo about three years ago. Which you’d probably know about if you kept in any amount of contact with her.”

Adrien shrugs and presses his face into the unassuming mask of indifference, since he currently has no concrete train of intelligible thought to think about Marinette. It is one he wore quite frequently. “I never pegged her for the type, is all. I remember her a stuttering weepy mess around me in grade school, so…”

Nino’s scoff is loud and unfiltered this time. “Really, dude? The fuck is wrong with you?” He shakes his head and they round the bend towards Nino’s flat.

“What? What do you mean?” His expression is one of genuine surprise. Everyone eats his farts back in America because he's a _model_ and an insanely rich one at that, and the last couple of hours back home have been a very sobering and increasingly agitating reality check.

“Listen, I don’t know what shit went down between you and your dad, and even less between you and Marinette before you left, but you’ve got a considerable amount of Daddy issues and defensive-moat-spiked-dragon forts you’ve got to bust down if you’re going to survive any amount of time back in your old social circles in Paris.”

The newer Adrien wants to thrust back at his old pal in all of his nonchalantly caustic glory, but Nino’s right, so he settles for silence. There are a limited number of Parisian individuals who know that he made the decision to move back to Paris, and he plans on keeping it that way. 

Truth be absolutely told, he was instantly enamored with Marinette. Cute but undeniably quirky when they were kids, damn if she didn’t flesh out into dark little beauty that would bring down the fire and brimstone if he didn’t tread carefully. He hadn’t felt the fire in his loi...er, veins for someone else like this since… Ladybug.

Adrien clears his throat in the silence, and Nino just looks at him. 

But years of irreparable damage in the way of his mother’s absence, the agony of heartbreak and mistrust from LB, and a steady unyielding onslaught of less-than-wholesome relationships (if you could call them that) during his stint at an American university and otherwise travelling abroad left him slightly incapable of treating Marinette with any of the respect she deserved in their youth. Women were high on his "to-do" list, no doubt, but not so much on the "to-respect" list. 

Compound all of that with the inexplicable explosion of their last meeting before he left Paris and strained subsequent attempts at conversation a little while afterward, and he is left with a terrible taste in his mouth. Still.

Somewhere along the way, he had turned into a dog, and a devlishly unholy handsome one at that, and he used his psuedo-cockiness and strong foundation for defensive barriers to his advantage. Not a day since he turned 16 and shed the last semblance of his boyish innocence had he ever had trouble getting a woman to look his way. The longer Plagg melded with his soul, the sleazier and laid-back Adrien had become; qualities he had been able to play to his advantage both as a young, promising business elite and successful navigator of the nighttime social stratosphere. 

But even still, in his dark little model heart is the old Adrien, crying for retribution from the 20-something-year-old Adrien’s sins, mortified that the gaping hole between his old and new life has turned so deeply entrenched in a cold greyscale nothingness. That the warmth and love of his friends and acquaintances in Paris is replaced by mixed looks of surprise, disgust, and admiration for the figure he stands as today. That he has become exactly as mistrusting, cold, and unnurturing as his father because of all of the walls he’s erected along the way. 

He shudders, partly horrified and partly proud of himself.

Some fear him. Most bend to his will, as people tend to want to always please the pretty ones. Some, namely those who were closest to him, give him a look that makes him wonder if he washed his clothes in liquid Camembert.

A dark-haired angry face comes to mind.

His face sours.


	3. Melancholy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I just finished writing some super-sweet, super-juicy Adrienette goodness for later, but unfortunately, you’re gonna have to bear with me through the pain and fun and pain before we get to that part.  It gets worse before it gets waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better, I promise.
> 
> Thanks for all the sweet comments, it's been fun to write so far.

 

“Daaaaayum, so sweet little Marinette has a tangible antagonist to her story,” Alya says while sliding in front of Marinette’s computer and pulling up the Ladyblog.  “And it just so happens to be a former unrequited flame.” 

Marinette doesn’t respond, but Alya can hear her scowling from across the room.  Instead, the short pop of the cork and glugging of wine dumping into their glasses fill the space. 

“Tikki, you can come on out of there,” Alya says in between the clicks of the mouse as she scours the comments for anything--a sign, a word, just something.  “The trembling ball underneath Marinette’s shirt is a dead giveaway, unless she grew a third cancerous nipple I don’t know about.”   

The little kwami bursts out from Marinette’s collar with a giggle and floats over to nuzzle Alya’s cheek.   

Tikki and Marinette had been on the fence about telling Alya for quite some time, but in the end, she’d made it easy for them by connecting the dots during a response to a huge pollution case in the Seine River two summer breaks ago.  It had been a huge relief for Marinette for her best girl to finally know why she had been absent in both mind and body during their schooldays.  The burden of keeping her other life a secret for so long had far begun to peel her edges.  And of course after the initial shock wore off, Alya took it in full-stride, every bit as loyal to keep her secret as she would lend an ear about the woes of bakery-daughter life.

Not even Nino knows Marinette is Ladybug. 

“That you don’t know about,” Marinette says with a grin.  

“Oh, what, you’ve grown some spots since I’ve seen you last, have you?”  Alya retorts.

“Is that a poor attempt at a pun?”  Marinette says through their shared laughter before realizing the implication.  The duo pointedly avoided puns for a specific reason. 

There is a pause as the playful banter fizzles into reluctance.  Marinette’s voice is small, but she still asks: “Any news on him?”  Dare she say his name and make his absence real?  

Alya spins around on her chair, her face warm and apologetic.  “Nah, babe.  I’ve been looking every day for our little cat, but I think he’s…” 

“Don’t say it.”  Marinette’s voice is defeated, broken, and she hides her sadness by throwing back her wine glass and emptying the contents without ceremony down her gullet.  _Gone for good._  

But still, as melancholy goes, the guilt and anguish threaten to well up in Marinette’s eyes in the form of hot tears, and as is her newfound character, she presses them away with a hard thumb and a weathered frown.  

The last time they had spoken was too painful to relive, but of course, the images swell over her mind’s eye anyway.

_“My lady, don’t you think it would…” he sighs, a throaty, disgruntled sound, marred with a level of impatience she never thought Chat Noir would be capable of.  It was the start of a years’-old argument between them, and of course, it was the most explosive then, on the cusp of their graduation from school and the turning of a page into the new chapters of their lives._

_But they were both angered, and frustrated, and so stilted when it came to their feelings.  Stubborn.  Cryptic.  None of what they said ever came out the way they meant it._

_What were they even saying?_  

_Oh that’s right.  He gave her an ultimatum.  He’s leaving, in some tornado of inexplicable teenage angst.  No one ever said Chat didn’t go big in everything he did, even if it was wrong._

_“No, Chat.  If you want to leave, then go ahead, but don’t make it about me.”_

_“But,_ Ladybug _,” he said harshly, gripping her shoulders with sticky fingerprints.  “It’d all be so easy, if you just told me who you were, and I could sh-show you who I am.  Then we’d make it work.  I swear.  But I need to know.  No more games, I don’t have the heart for this.”  He gestured between them with a clawed hand._

_She turned away from him._ Why such defeatist mentality, Kitty?   _She wanted to ask._ What is happening in your life right now?   _“I need you here as my partner._ Professionally _.”  The way she said that last word was a little colder than she intended.  “To fight Hawkmoth.  And we’ve been over this too many times--compromising our identities will only destroy our loved ones, and I can’t have that.”  Her thoughts, as always, drift to Adrien, and then this boy who stood before her.  The two most confusing people in her life, whom she shared equally confusing and muddled feelings for._

_The loud smack of his hand hitting the hard muscle of his thigh echoed in the alleyway beneath them.  He threw his hands up.  There were so many things happening to him, so many changes, he figured,_ well, why not?  Wear his heart on a fucking sleeve.  

_The way his Lady’s eyes had widened, her body strung taut and frozen, off-guard, meant that he said all of that out loud._

_“Don’t you see?  I mean, fuck, I’ve been so obvious about it!”  He said, words watery and gaze wavering.  “You are my only loved one.  I don’t care about anyone else.  Or anything else.  Everyone and everything else has left me because I’m just bad luck.  But, you show me who you are--give me a reason to stay, it doesn’t matter.  I’ll drop everything for you.  But I can’t--I won’t make a life decision based on someone who doesn’t trust me all the way.  I’ve done that shit for too long as it is, letting other people live my life for me.  Come on, Ladybug, even after all these years?  Is it really that hard to trust me?  To trust us?”_

_She couldn’t answer him.  Wouldn’t answer him.  It was never that she didn’t trust him.  She didn’t trust herself.  Having been dumped only hours before by the only boy she thought she could ever love, she didn’t want Chat to go through the same anguish._

_Besides, if she gave her heart to Chat Noir, how could she fully give her heart to saving Paris?  She would pick him, every time.  It’s just how she was._

_And so she hesitated, the words forming swaths of stifling cotton on her tongue_  .

_He laughed, bitterly.  This is just the icing on the cake of his shitty, shitty life.  “Thought so.”  He steps away from her and scrunches up his body for the leap down to the streets below._  

_“Well, LB, it’s been a real… something.  I’m not going to do this anymore.  Shit’s just too convoluted, and I’ve compromised the mission long enough by being around you.  ‘Sides, you never really needed me to begin with, being the starchild and all.”  The bitterness in his voice matched the darkness in his soul the one time he was akumatized by Dark Cupid, spitting hot venom into her face with an edge to kill.  He pushed his arm angrily across the bottom of his mask, wiping away any wet signs of grievance on her behalf.  “I’m going to go off and see what else the world has to offer, besides heartbreak on the chilly unforgiving rooftops of Paris.”_  

_“No, Chat, wait--”_  

_“See ya ‘round, LB.  Take care of Paris for me.”_

“Marinette,” Tikki’s small voice calls from the void of the present, and her room comes back into focus in multicolored blotches.  Marinette realizes she’s been crying, and wipes away her tears noisily on the back of her hand.  Her heart intertwined with Tikki’s, the kwami knows what it is to feel her pain, and so Marinette tries to keep it bottled.

“Hey, girl.  We’ll find him,” Alya says as she sidles up to Marinette on the floor and pours them both another glass.  “We’ll find that boy underneath the mask.  And after I beat an impression of his face into the concrete, we’ll clean him up and give him a chance to make things right again.”  She reaches over and thumbs a tear from underneath Marinette’s eye. 

Marinette, to keep herself from continuing to cry, is sidelined by a fit of laughter, having seen the very image of Chat plowed headfirst into several hard things—the side of buildings, the long sprawl of sidewalks, and buses, and water towers.  He had always seemed to leap headfirst into things, without considering the consequences of his actions until much, much later.  There still is hope, and this fills Marinette with a hyper giddiness.

“You’re right,” she sniffs, and Tikki floats over to snuggle underneath her chin. 

“This goes without saying, but not only are you one bad-ass bitch as a civilian, you’re still the bad-ass bitch in a tight, spotted spandex suit.  There’s no way you couldn’t get any boy you wanted, if and when you wanted.”

Marinette puffs a sprout of bangs from her face and narrows her eyes at Alya.  “I don’t want a boy.  I’ve had enough of those in Brussels,” she says and a wicked grin springs across her face.

“OOHHH GIRL, spill it, now.  I need the deets ‘cause you’ve been holding back on me about your escapades, how could yoooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUuuuu,” Alya whines.

“MARINETTE, ALYA,” Sabine calls from the ladder below her door.  “DINNER TIME.”

Marinette finishes her glass of wine, and Alya pinches her side.  “You’re lucky the dinner bell rang, but as soon as we come back up here to get ready for tonight, you’ll not leave out a single juicy morsel, you hear me?”


	4. Reassurance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I didn't really edit this, but I wanted to post it before I started travelling.
> 
> Oh yeah, Adrien has curls, and that'll be explained later. 
> 
> Also, adult things happen here... and probably for the foreseeable future.

_So sweet little Marinette's got a stick up her ass,_ Adrien partially fumes as he follows Nino up the stairs. Upon entering Nino’s flat, he throws himself down onto the couch without a passing thought for the inevitable wrinkles his shirt will suffer through, while Nino busies himself in the kitchen mixing drinks.

“So, you feelin’ French fashion week or World War I basement bar?”

“Do I even have to remind you that I still hate being a model, deep down inside underneath this crunchy, attractive exterior?” Adrien’s muffled whines drift up from where his face is pressed into the crook of a cushion.

“Okay then, no fashion week inspired drinks that I looked up online and wanted to try a few days ago. Thanks for dashing my dreams, Agreste, you’ve always been good for that,” Nino says. Adrien can hear the smile in his voice.

“Seems I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, although I have no idea in hell how."

“For starters, and we’ve addressed this before, but, I’m just gonna say it: you’re kind of a huge asshole now.”

Adrien sits up, scoffing. “I am not.” He has this strangely intense urge to toss his curls from his face, but quickly realizes that will do little to make him look like less of an asshole.

Nino tosses a martini while giving Adrien the look, and the ice clanking around the cocktail mixer serves to emphasize his point.

They settle in front of the tube for a non-competitive game of Super Smash Brothers (Melee only, because Nino swears up and down that’s the only version he’ll play), in which Adrien, who plays an alternation between Sheik and Pikachu, destroys Nino’s Bowser, 14-1. Over the course of the matches and passes of Nino’s glass bowl packed to the brim with grass, Adrien’s coat of standoff-ish elitist-type behavior he’s picked up somewhere along the way slinks off into a pile in the corner by the front door.

“Damn, they don’t make it in the States the way you can get it here,” he purrs, smoke filtering from his nostrils in long lazy curls and dissipating into the haze of smoke settling over the living room.

“Yeah, this strain’s straight from underground hydro-labs in Amsterdam, tuned perfectly by a lot of science and a little bit of TLC,” Nino hums. “Although I heard the shit out there is good too, though?”

“In some places,” Adrien hums back. “But in NY, I’m always worried it’ll be laced with some terrible cocktail of PCP and designer fads that I don’t even bother buying.”

The image of Pikachu having a conniption fit from clapping too hard and the looping trumpets of the end-of-match soundtrack fades into the background as they sit in companionable silence.

“Dude, fuck... I’m sorry I disappeared for so long,” Adrien laments, passing the cherried bowl to Nino. They’ve melted quite nicely into Nino’s black leather couch, which protests here and there as they bend toward one another to pass a pinch of Nino’s bud between them. Although, the leather shrieks that Adrien hears in his mind come not from the couch, but a certain dark-haired beauty’s jacket as she rips it from her body and slings it over the chair in a surge of anger displayed earlier.

Bits of Adrien’s older, shier and self-depreciating personality has surfaced as a result of the weed and privacy of the apartment, and Nino welcomes it with open and forgiving arms.

“Say no more, broseph. I get it. Your life has always been a lot harder than ours, and I can’t fault you for wanting to get away. But I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” he says, his voice getting quieter with each word. “You owe that distinct pleasure to Mari.”

He wonders at what point in his absence sweet little Marinette became _Mari._

“What are you talking about, Nino? I did nothing to her. We had a disagreement five years ago, partly because I was angsty about my father, and partly because I got fed up with not being able to understand a damn word she said to me at the time. She always said weird things, or half-thoughts, and yeah, I was harsh and I still feel bad about that, but trust me, before I left, she made it clear that neither she nor anyone else here was sorry I was leaving. We had our fight and then I flew into New York and then she apparently decided to grind an axe to her grave.” He drags antsy fingers through his bangs, and the curls part down the middle, much like his secret superhero counterpart.

He didn’t even mention the angsty separation from Ladybug. The mere thought of it sent a spark of electricity up his spine and he feels Plagg twitch in the inner pocket of his sports jacket.

Nino hums and takes a pull from the bowl. “Man, that was not what I heard from her and Alya.” He chuckles with disbelief. “The two of you and your inabilities to communicate to one another are what make this story so perfect,” he muses through his distinctive chortling. He shakes his head and flicks the lighter into the curl of the glass to set fire to the resin.

Adrien’s mind, muddled by weed and the shots they took, starts to grind its gears in the slow cogs of anger and regret. “Whuh-what? Man, start making some sense, please.”

“You still don’t know? Even now? Shit, I thought that’s why you both hated each other. Unrequited love and all that.”

“Huh?” Adrien shakes his head and his bangs fall back into place. He reaches for his glass and it slips through shaky fingers and nearly crashes to the ground if it weren’t for his cat-reflexes.

“Dude, she loved you. She loved the _shit_ out of you. She couldn’t speak because you made her weak in the bee’s knees, namean?”

“ _What?_?” He sputters on a piece of ice and it falls onto the glass coffee table with a crack. Marinette loved him? For how long? And when? What the what?

“Yeah, dude. She felt so out of your league that she couldn’t form words right. And here, come to find, you got pissed off because you thought she couldn’t wait for you to get out of Paris fast enough? Tell me one thing: does she know your father disappeared?”

“No, well, no one does, except for you. It just went down in the news as a sabbatical to the States, in which I was to follow him and go to school.”

“Yeah, well, once Alya gets wind of that tasty morsel, I can imagine things are going to blow up real quick.”

“No. _No_ , Nino. I didn’t come back here for all the wounds to be torn apart all over again. I came back after all this time because I felt in a safe, mature enough place in my life to take over Father’s company.”

“All I’m saying is, if she knew the kind of pain you were going through then, she woulda bent over backwards to make you happy again. Hell, we all would have.”

Adrien’s only response is silence as he worries his bottom lip in between his teeth. All of this news hits him like a brick wall to the face in his early Chat days.

“Anyway,” he puffs, offering another round back to Adrien. “I thought you had bad blood ‘cause she told you she loved you and you had feelings for someone else after leading her on for all those years.”

“I didn’t lead her on,” he says loudly, sitting up. Still, he’s ever the elementary school child that doesn’t know how to deal well with real emotions. Superficial girls, model women, ladies after his money and prestige are easier to deal with. They don’t require feelings. Wholesome girls in tight pink capris with unbridled potential who now walk with a lick of wildfire under their lacked up leather boots, girls in spots with dark hair, mind-blowing confidence and a sharp tongue he often dreamt about sticking in terrible places—those are the women Adrien Agreste is afraid of. W-we just hung out a lot. She helped distract me from home.”

“Dude, ya’ll were real cozy up ‘til graduation.”

“We were all cozy up to graduation, Neen. Superfriends, I think you called us. There was even a theme song.”

“Yeah, well, apparently not cozy enough.” Nino finishes his drink in a single gulp and with the creaking protest of leather, he leaves for the kitchen.

‘ _Cause you left_ , the spaces in between the piles of Nino’s favorite records seem to say, and in the slow drip of paranoia and regret, no doubt brought on by the swirl of substances oozing through his limbs, Adrien loses focus. He looks around, his head twirling around the spin of a tea cup ride, and like pricks from pin needless as designers bustle around and stick him silly with their tailored clothing, pieces of Nino’s life with his old friends—without him—come into view.

Notes in Alya’s scrawl stuck ten ways to sideways all over his stainless steel fridge, a quick doodle of a cat in a motorcycle cap with a feather sticking out of the visor, autographed in Mari’s distinctive, artistic loop framed and hanging at the bar division between the living room and his kitchen, a pink polka dotted coffee cup—no doubt a Marinette signature piece—drying on a towel on the counter, Alya’s old teal eyeglasses case he recognizes from college sitting tossed on a side table beside the couch, a pin board covered in photos of the three of them hanging out at cafes, Marinette’s university in Brussels, and theme parks and house parties and former classmates’ weddings.

All things he could have been a part of, had he not left.

Adrien’s stomach stirs in a bad way, and he’s two split hairs away from clamming up and sliding on his mondo-asshole-mask. “Listen, Neen, can we, uh, shift gears here? Any more bud and I might wash up on this couch and miss your concert.”

“Yeah, bro, no problem. It’s about time to get ready anyway. You can drop your things in the guest room and hit the showers first, if you need.” Nino’s already on top of another bowl to ease the pre-show jitters, and downs another shot.

Adrien gets up, dizzy and unaccustomed to feeling so inebriated so quickly (he stopped drinking for the summer because of the strict schedule of photo shoots that booked him through next August), and grabs his leather overnight bag and slings it over his shoulder.

Several minutes later, with the hot steam of the shower curling around his legs and the water pelting down into his face, Adrien feels pent up and uneasy. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come back to Paris. His father’s company had been deftly handled without his help, and he certainly didn’t need the money. He had plenty of friends and girls and fun back at his place in L.A. What the hell was he doing here?

Nino would be furious if he knew what Adrien intends to use his shower for, but with all the strange feelings swirling around like a bad meal in the bottom of his gut, coupled with the spitfire image of Mari, fully-fleshed into a gorgeous young woman (not to mention the split second sensation of her body pressed tightly up against his thanks to her enduring clumsiness), he does what any man would to relieve pressure.

And so, several minutes after, his anxiety, weed-hangover dregs, and spent cream circle the drain of the walk-in shower, and he lets the water spill over him until it runs cold.

Stepping out of the shower in a plume of leftover steam, he slides the cold steel of his confidence, his money and his surname back into place as a full-bodied, familiar set of armor. The past brings up too many emotions he made the decision long ago to run away from, and he’ll be damned if he lets anyone see him squirm.

After he is dressed, he stares at the strong chin of his grandfather, his mother’s captivating emeralds, and smooth arrow of a nose, inherited from his father in the mirror. A young Mr. Agreste stares back at him, powerful, sleek, ambitious, sinfully attractive in a casual, slim-fit white blouse and silk trousers. He has a company to run, a line of expensive clothes to model and sell, and a reputation to uphold, and he can make it in any international arena he so chooses. No little girl with an old flame and motor boots is going to mess that up for him, he tells himself weakly as he sets his jaw in the mirror.

He thanks the stars for Nino, who presents him with a double shot and some lamentation about being friends with a _damn model_ upon his eventual reemergence from the bathroom, and he drinks until he’s able to fool himself into thinking all those things are true.


	5. Regret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive Agreste, for he knows not what he does. Don't worry, Marinette will set him straight. This is getting more mature as time goes on, so don't be weird about it. Haha. :) It's a good mature, I promise.

“Sweet little Marinette’s got an _ass_ ,” Alya hisses into Adrien’s ear a few hours later as he thumbs the lip of his fifth beer bottle in what he hopes is an air of extreme indifference. He has the natural model pout, thick pink flesh of his bottom lip jutting out just slightly enough to make the gaggle of girls at the other end of the bar chitter uncontrollably amongst themselves. He braces his arms backward on the bar, legs crossed and twisting a little drink umbrella through his fingers. He hears barely-hushed whispers of his last name fling out like wildfire into the crowd, and he finally turns to his friend.

“I’m sure she does,” he offers, so bored, and takes a long pull from his bottle. In fact, he _knows_ she does. It’s all he’s really been able to watch since they got to Nino’s club hours ago. 

She’s all svelte and sex in a tight red spotted number that clings to each curve and ends mid-thigh. Coupled with her cropped leather jacket, fingerless gloves and black heeled ankle boots, he’s having a much harder time keeping to his _don’t gawk_ rule. 

“Hey, I’ve thought about going clam for her before, trust me,” Alya teases and bumps his shoulder, but he sits there, surveying the club stoically. His eyes sweep the crowds, but always magnetize back to Marinette.  


“I’m sure you have,” he mutters. 

“Lighten up, would you, Agreste? Your cold model act doesn’t work with me. I remember you nerding out hard with Nino about Naruto. And you smelled like stinky cheese most days.” 

“Shh, woman.” He waggles his eyebrows in good nature at her. He’s gotta get her off of his tail about Marinette, and quick. “Watch this, Alya.”

His tongue darts out to the corner of his mouth to curl around a bit of foam left on his lips from the last dregs of his beer. He looks up to shoot a smouldering look at a red-headed model three people down from him at the bar, and she raises a carefully manicured eyebrow. She’s equal parts thin and lascivious in a delicious way, and she dips her head to her friend for a moment before she starts to saunter over.

Alya rolls her eyes, mouthing the word “bathroom” to him before disappearing into the crowd.

Marinette comes jogging back, twirling Nino into the pair at the bar just in time to see Adrien torturing the poor women in his vicinity and scowls. She’s naturally ignored him all night, her scowl growing deeper every time he’s tried to speak, and she’s always choosing a perch with Nino and Alya in between them. For the three times he’s decided to get up and dance, she makes sure to swing herself across the floor out of his reach. 

Not that he is ever alone: an influx of females surges like a frothy tidal wave in her absence, but still.

Frankly, Marinette’s childish animosity toward him has far worn its welcome with his patience, and he’s two snide remarks shy of snapping at her.

Right now though, she’s in the middle of an unfiltered smile, chest heaving, and cheeks ruddy with the glow of alcohol and joyful exertion. Nino’s arm curls around Mari’s waist, and they share the heady laughter of friends enjoying the heat of the moment.

“I can’t wait for you to go on, Nee—”

Until she sees him, arm around the shoulders of the busty red-head, swirling his drink dangerously close to the woman’s cleavage.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She says with no small amount of derision, and watches the woman whom he tongue-punched the air for trace a finger along the sharp cut of his jaw. 

He lifts his eyebrows at her, and his mouth falls into a cattish smirk. He’s barely paying any attention to the red-head, which, of course, only works in his favor as she becomes more desperate to keep his attentions.

Marinette sidles up next to his spot at the bar. It’s the closest she’s been in over five years.

“You’re disgusting, Agreste,” she scoffs, scrunching her button nose, and such informal use of his last name burns. He knows she'd never prefix him with "monsieur," but he smiles, having rustled her jimmies anyhow. She turns away from him with a flip of her long braid cutting the air in front of his face and lifts herself on her tip toes to get the attention of the bartender for another drink.  


Adrien shrugs for lack of a better response. He watches the small jiggle of her ass as she bounces on the balls of her feet and taps an impatient rhythm on the bar. 

Adrien lifts his eyebrows. Sweet little Mari is, apparently, not one to wait for anyone. 

The knowledge of her crushing on him hard back in grade school now burns like a magical torch in the folds of his brain.

“What do you want, Nino?” She says, placing an emphasis on the inclusion of Nino’s request, and the absence of her blonde counterpart’s. 

“Yo, whatever you’re drinkin’s fine with me, Mari,” Nino replies, watching the DJ’s machinations and the pulse of the crowd with the air of a critic to glean the attitude of the dancefloor and prepare himself for the stage.

“Hey Adrien,” the woman purrs, and she’s so close that a puff of whiskey breath flutters Adrien’s bangs.

“Yeah, babe?” He says a little too loudly, his face turned toward Marinette. There’s a rush from Marinette’s proximity, and he can’t help himself but to paint it on much too thick.

Marinette was never dumb to begin with, and she jerks her head in his direction, eyes narrowed and accusing. She forms her fists into boxing mitts, taut and ready at her waist, looking for a reason to sock him in the temple. She knows his game.

“After this, my girlfriends and I are thinking about heading to an exclusive rooftop party, if you want to join us,” the red-head says, eyeing Marinette and Nino. Adrien hums in response, neither in affirmation or negation, and Marinette turns her body to him, eking out space she might need to physically destroy both him and this woman.

He weathers her glare for a quick look at her face, and traces his gaze along the smokey eyeshadow eclipsing a pair of the bluest eyes he’s ever seen. Eyes bluer than the crystalline glint of the sun on an ocean crest, sharper than the angle of a Macaw’s wing, fuller than the expanse of a virgin morning sky. A small, tart nose curving into a shapely angel’s bow above two soft pink lips, glittered by tiny beads of sweat forming there. Freckles dust the architecture of her high cheekbones, and he follows his eyes along the smooth ivory skin of her throat. 

A sweet little mole sits directly underneath the turn of her jaw where it meets her ear, and teases him. 

_Kiss me_ , it says.

All of these things he could have kissed twenty-billion times by now had he done things far differently.

He looks at her through half-lidded eyes, feigning disinterest. The lines of her body are angrily enticing. Sweat clings to her and acts as a delicious catalyst to the activation of her deodorant and perfume, and he inhales her. 

Maybe it’s the booze concocted with all that high-quality bud, but her scent is both intoxicating and nostalgic, and fills him with regret.

God, how stupid he was—

“Boy, I can’t think of a night where I was less nervous about being on stage than around the lot of you,” Nino exclaims, interrupting whatever catfight was about to erupt between Mari and Adrien.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of them,” Alya says, materializing behind her boyfriend and pressing a quick peck to his cheek. “You go play your heart out, babe.” 

Adrien taps the bar twice and the bartender hurries over to him despite having not helped Marinette. 

“What do you want, Sweetheart?” He slides his half-lidded gaze to her just as she scoffs.

“If you think I can’t get my own drinks, you’ve got another thi—”

He rolls his eyes and rattles off an order in English so that Marinette doesn’t understand. A double shot of Jean-Marc XO washed down with a shotgun Redbull might be enough to shut her up.

The Redbull comes first, and his presses one into the hands of his red-head before nodding to Marinette’s can. “Neen, mind getting that for her?”

“Yeah, bro, but why the hell didn’t I get one?”

Marinette squawks. “I can open my own drink, thank y—”

“One: you need to stay alive enough for the stage, and two, I have a score to settle with this one,” he says, giving her a grin. 

He doesn’t give her time to protest once the vodka arrives in front of them. “Race you, Dupain-Cheng, on three.”

She gawks at him, but he watches her face slide into a formidable scowl, taking his bait. He knows she’ll never step down from a challenge.

Nino and the red-head lay down the count as the music and people swirl and crackle around them. The model’s friends have sidled up next to Adrien, while Alya and Nino stand as solid sentries on Marinette’s right. Nearby nosy patrons, having caught on to the young Agreste’s presence in the club, crowd around them. 

“—Three!” They cry, and Adrien and Marinette rip the shotglasses from the bar and throw their heads back as the vodka burns its way down their throats. Within fractions of a second, Marinette slams down her glass onto the bar with an angry crack. 

Next, come the crack and hiss of the tabs, and the two of them tear the cans from the grips of their referees and choke back the tart licorice flavor in sputtering gasps. Both empty cans are smashed onto the bar at the same time.

“It’s a tie!” Alya says, foxy grin spreading across her mouth as she hugs Nino and Marinette to her hip. Their audience erupts in argument, equally divided about who conquered whom.

“Not bad, Dupain-Cheng,” Adrien leans over to purr into her ear. “There aren’t many mortals who give my Bull a run for its money.” He waggles his eyebrows for full effect.  


Her bark of laughter is sharp and spicy, followed by a groan of disbelief. “You’re trying too hard with that pun, Agreste.”

The shot works its magic quickly over her, instantly softening her scowl and boxed fists.

He says nothing as she draws closer to him. “I still won, though,” she says, folding both arms on the bar. The bartender, realizing her affiliation with Adrien, whips up another lemoned martini for her in a hot second.

“How do you figure?” He opens his body to her like a flower to the sun, effectively forgetting the other woman falling away from his shoulders like discarded petals.  


“I finished my shot first,” she says with a shrug, thumbing the thin stem of her glass.

“Nonsense,” he says, taking a gamble and pulling up closer to her, dialing up the charm to the redline. Strands of ebonied silk spring out from her temples, feathering with the puff of his breath, and he’s stricken with a nearly insatiable urge to tame them around the curl of her ear. He can smell the Spring lifting gently from her skin, a light breeze dancing through a rosebush. He doesn’t dare sneak a glance at her lips this close. He’d lose his cool.

She smirks at him, and with a well-placed index finger to the tip of his nose, shoves him away from her in such a familiar gesture that he wrenches back from her and nearly topples into the gaggle of girls behind him.

It’s a banter he’s gladly been victim to, countless times before, when his Lady—

It only takes a few seconds of the crowd pressing in around him to make his stomach flip. She’s looking at him, confused as to why he over-dramatized his reaction, and the nauseous swirl of too much alcohol and too many strange smells entrenches his senses. He hangs there, mouth wide open in shock, eyes flicking from the spots on her dress to her face. Shock quickly melts into sharp tinges of regret, as the image of Ladybug pushes its way into the swirling dregs of his mind.

He pulls himself up quickly and pulls at both ends of his sportcoat with a goofy shrug and amicable grin, lighting off a bout of laughter around them.

“Sorry, ladies,” he purrs. They don’t look sorry at all to have Adrien Agreste fall into their welcoming bosoms. They pick and preen at him, flattening the wrinkles in his grey silken dress shirt and running their fingers through his gelled-out curls. This must be what a puppy feels like at a bachelorette's party. 

Marinette rolls her eyes, and turns away from him with squared shoulders, but he doesn’t miss the upward turns in the corners of her mouth that she tries to hide.

“Hey dogs, I’m going on in five,” says Nino. He’s eyeing Adrien with a strange look that promises a lot of interrogation later. 

Alya reaches up and captures him in a swift kiss. "Make us cream ourselves, babe."

Adrien smiles to himself, engaging in idle chatter with two fans who've offered to buy him a drink. _I can work with this,_ he thinks. The alcohol binds to his ego and fuels the bravado surging in his chest. There isn't a lady alive that is immune to his charms forever, and there isn't a lady out there he's wanted to charm more than Marinette Dupain-Cheng.


End file.
